


Sound of Settling

by smolhombre



Category: Naruto
Genre: (And that's not even the feel good ba dum tss), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banter, Character Development, Dysfunctional Family, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Feel-good, Flawed Characters Trying Their Best, Humor, No Angst Only Mild Strife, Snark as One of the Five Love Languages, Tender loving care, Trolls and Meme Lords, genuine love and affection, respect women juice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-01 14:35:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16767049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolhombre/pseuds/smolhombre
Summary: “Anyway, I — stop trying to stab me, Temari, it’s annoying. And stop oogling other men, while we’re at it. I’m trying to marry to you.”-Choji and Ino both said that Shikamaru was largely emotionally illiterate, but here he is, in a miserable desert cave, with his questionably legitimate fiance, having just called into question her integrity as a shinobi and their personal sexual history to boot, doing just great.





	1. I. Offers

I.

“You should marry me.”

“That good, huh?”

“I can’t hold it against you, considering I’ve seen you at your worst. I was there when you lost your virginity, if you remember.” She grabs the sheets pooled around his waist and tugs them over herself none too gently. “Don’t ignore me, Shikamaru. We should get married.”

Shikamaru sweeps his knuckles idly up the long, sweaty line of Temari’s spine. “Probably should,” he hums, not even having the physical fortitude to shrug when he says it. Not his most compelling argument, if it really matters.

Her face is mostly buried in his pillow and her coarse, thick hair is a riot that hides the rest from him, but he’s pretty sure she’s joking, anyway. As sure as he can be of anything right now, a boneless, spent parenthesis around her body. Nothing serious is ever discussed so soon post-orgasm, and by his foggy estimation, they should be incoherent for at least a few more minutes. Then again, his calculations _could_ be off, considering his brain is currently only capable of the occasional, soft: _warm. Nice. Temari. Temari. Quiet. Happy. Quiet. Touch. Touch. Touch, again. Nice. Touch. Touch. Smoke? Mm. No. Too warm. Comfortable. Nice. Good. Temari. Temari. Temari. Good. Good. Good._

One of her unreasonably cold feet nudges his shin as she shifts beside him, granting him a better view of the door opposite the bed. Technically, by now they should be checking the traps outside of the little barnhouse’s parameter, but...

But it’s been weeks since he got to feel the satiny muscle of her thigh under his hand or locked around his waist, and from the windows the light is haloing her body in a rainbow of pink and lilac, and really, this foray out into the Nara forest was on a made up errand anyway. It would be a shame to waste a gift on working _or_ talking. He slings one of his legs over hers, pulling her closer.

“Since when do you fucking cuddle?” She snorts, raking her nails a hair too hard on his forearm. He recognizes it as the same kind of affection Ino’s cat is prone to giving, and the thought makes him give her a little squeeze. He hopes quite desperately that she’ll forget it once the sex-brain clears.

_Since you always have to leave, and I won’t get to touch you until Hatake or Gaara takes pity on us with a bullshit mission where we can sneak off to do this again. Since this hasn’t been enough for a while, but what else can we ask for? Since I love you, because I’m an idiot._

“Since we’re getting married now,” he says instead, smirking into the crown of her hair. “This is what honest men do with their women. Unless it’s not what you want anymore. You’ve always been fickle.”

Temari bolts upright. There’s a nasty green bruise mottling her left shoulder from where she dislocated it on her last mission, not to mention a gash near her temple that really warranted the stitches she refused at the hospital. Dark smudges ring her eyes, from lack of sleep or old makeup, he can’t tell, and her hair could use a thorough wash. Even Chouji would rag on him for it, but Shikamaru’s stomach clenches with something he refuses to call sweetness at the sight.

“Holy shit,” she breathes. “Holy _shit_ !” She punches his shoulder, hard because that’s the only way she knows how, before leveling an accusatory finger at his face. “You _actually want to fucking marry me_!”

_Ah, shit._

She has always been just a bit smarter than he is in the ways that really matter. Shikamaru scrubs a hand over his face, then through his loose hair. A smoke would be good now, after all. He’s been fucking _played_.

“Temari, I —”

“I can’t be a Leaf ninja.”

Suddenly, Shikamaru feels an illogical, impossible urge to vomit. “I don’t —”

Her nails bite into his skin with none of the affection from before. “Don’t what? Want me?”

_Ah, shit._

“You are such a pain in my ass,” he growls, sitting up only to roll her flat underneath him. She allows it — too easily, he thinks, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Who is dumb enough to expect you to do that? That’s not you.”

Temari visibly bites the inside of her cheek. It could be to keep from smiling, but it’s also the face she sometimes makes before deciding to hit something with her fan. (Repeatedly, and with all the strength the corded muscles in her arms allow.)

“And does it feel like I don’t want you?” He murmurs, dipping down to nip at the blue pulse in her neck.

Underneath him, her laughter starts as a silent giggle that evolves into full hysteria which nearly shakes their bed. She’s wiping tears from her eyes as he rolls over onto his back with a beleaguered groan.

“Did your idiot Hokage lend you his porn books while I was gone?” She guffaws. “Did you miss me that bad?”

_Played again_ , he laments, wholly unbothered. After mostly collecting herself, she presses a kiss that’s mostly teeth to his shoulder, then to his jaw as she sits up.

He’s got a day and a half’s worth of stubble prickling his cheek that he scratches at absently while watching Temari stretch her way off the mattress. Her muscled back and shoulders roll deliciously under her bronze skin as she fishes around for his shirt, and she makes a tiny, almost inaudible _oof_ pulling it on when it catches a snarl in her hair.

“Married, huh?” He muses. She looks back at him over her shoulder, her expression sharp and hungry and pleased all at once. It’s familiar enough, to Shikamaru. Temari pulls the hair tie off of his wrist to wrangle her own into submission, and the whole time, her face reads: _Checkmate_.

* * *

“It’s nicer up here than I remember,” Temari hums around a mouthful of dango. She’s lounging on a low, plush couch in the diplomatic suite of Hokage Tower like some sort of child emperor, licking soy syrup from her fingers absently. Half the box is already gone, the rest balanced precariously on her stomach. Shikamaru leans up next to the window opposite to watch her, cataloging the way the colors in her hair shift in the light and dodging the dumpling sticks she shoots his way. “Why do I even stay with you if I can be waited on here?”

No, he realizes. Those last two were senbons, lodged in the wall now.

“I’m going to have to put that in the expense report when you leave,” he groans. “Damages to your suite.”

“ _You’re_ going to do that?”

“... _Some poor chuunin_ will have to add that to the expense report when you leave,” he amends grudgingly. In the courtyard below, Lee is challenging Sai to some sort of duel, bemoaning the artist’s lack of honor-something-or-other; whatever it was they did as foreplay these days. (Not that Shikamaru could, objectively, judge them.) He jerks his thumb at the window. “You don’t stay here because you’d have to deal with ruckus like that at all hours.” He pauses. “Also because of, you know. Me. Whatever.”

“ _‘Ruckus_?’” Temari echoes, incredulous. “Are you ninety-seven years old?”

Still, she gets up to peer out of the window, half-heartedly trying to stab him with the senbon in her hands all the while.

“Your artist friend is underestimating Lee,” she muses. Her tone is light but her eyes are sharp darting between them. It’s as close to a soft spot as she’s capable of showing while sober and in public, and Shikamaru knows she still has one for Lee no matter how long it’s been since their chuunin exams. If she’s unaware of the particulars of this match or of these two, he sees no reason to enlighten her.

“Most people do, no matter how many times he proves them wrong,” Shikamaru agrees, catching her wrist and prying the senbon away. He pokes it through one of her pigtails as she leans further out the window to get a better look at the match beneath them. She flings it back at his face without so much as a glance, another already in her other hand.

“Anyway, I — stop trying to stab me, Temari, it’s annoying. And stop oogling other men, while we’re at it. I’m trying to marry to you.”

“Are we having this conversation again for a reason?”

“ _Yes_ , because we have to decide if we mean it or not, because getting married now means we have _problems_.”

“Already with this? Kankuro has two hundred ryo on us not lasting the year, if he wins I’ll be upset.”

Frowning, he grabs a lock of hair and gives it a little tug. When she bats him away, he settles his hand heavily on her nape instead, it’s curve familiar under his palm. He gives her a little squeeze and watches her eyes flutter closed, just for a second. “I can’t just up and move to Suna for you. It’s not that easy.”

At this, Temari straightens and deigns to look away from the courtyard. His hand falls away. “When did I ask you to?”

They look at each other for a long minute, and Shikamaru tries very hard to not get distracted by the column of her throat, or the sunburn healing across her cheeks, or the fact that she’s finally here and he is, for a very stupid reason, not touching her while he has the chance.

He fiddles a scroll from his vest pocket and quickly releases the seal. Several heavy books appear with noiseless _pops_ in its center, carrying the smell of damp, old paper and mold.

“Okay. I’ll figure it out,” he mutters, falling into the chair closest to him. “I just...wanted to be sure we were still sticking to the plan.”

“You moron,” Temari sighs, but it feels like _I love you._ She takes the seat beside him and picks up one of the books, curling her legs up underneath her in the chair. “If you had just been born in the right country, you know, this would be easier.”

“Wish I could say the same. You were a terror even as a genin, you would have razed the Leaf already and killed me by now if you were born here and received any real, adequate training.”

The next senbon comes so fast he can’t dodge it completely; he feels blood trickle from the graze on the side of his neck onto the stiff collar of his jounin vest.

“Yes,” she agrees. “You’d definitely be dead by now.”

“Maybe that would be a mercy,” he concedes. From below, the building gives a threatening wobble as Lee shouts something encouraging at Sai. “If one of us was a civilian, this would be easier, too.”

She stiffens, looking up at him incredulously. “How dare you even _ask me that_. I’ve worked—”

“I could do it,” he shrugs.

“Don’t even joke.”

“I’m not,” he says, though he’s not entirely sure, really.

Temari swallows thickly. She’s looking down at the book in her hands, but her eyes aren’t moving like she’s reading. “You just want me to keep you up on my salary so you can cloud-watch all day. This marriage is a sham from the start for you to mooch my inheritance.”

“I could make it worth your while, if you’re interested,” he smirks, leaning over to press a kiss under her jaw as one hand snakes up her thigh. It’s a pipe dream, he _knows that_ , and he’s not really committed to wanting it to begin with, but if she’s _offering_ he won’t deny himself imagining —

“You’re right. I’ve changed my mind. Come back to Suna with me. That’s what I — that’s what I want. Come to Suna.”

He freezes, his nose pressed into the hollow behind her ear, one hand still halfway cupping her outside of her shorts. His shampoo always smells better on her than when he uses it himself, and maybe it’s frying his brain, because he doesn’t immediately say no. Which he should have done. Which he should do now. Which he is, somehow, still not doing.

“Just to try,” she adds, voice soft like how she’s only comfortable doing when he’s mostly asleep and curled around her in the still, quiet dark. She turns her head so their noses bump together, her brows furrowed like she’s not sure what he’s going to say. Like there’s anything but one thing _to_ say.

They aren’t in bed and are unfortunately clothed, but his brain is somehow still doing the post-sex loop with her so close and available and _asking_ him for something that’s not really his to give away: _warm. Smells nice. Good. Temari. Temari. Good. Mine. Temari. Temari._

“No,” he says finally. But it comes out wrong, somehow, and it sounds like this: “Help me look for a way, then.”

* * *

Sai is spread eagle on the floor of the antechamber to the Hokage’s office, holding an ice pack to the left half of his face and smiling pleasantly at nothing in particular as Lee, cradling his bloodied right arm to his chest, tries to ward off visibly necessary medical attention from a harassed looking nurse. The medical chuunin looks near tears when Temari and Shikamaru enter, and within seconds Shikamaru is tempted to join them.

“You two are still here?” He groans. “I thought they had scraped you up already.” He desperately wants to avoid an audience for this, but Temari doesn’t seem to share his concern. She walks over to Sai easily and nudges his shoulder with the toe of her boot. Undoubtedly, Shikamaru’s good for nothing brain will find a way to put that image to a less-than-honorable use later, likely when Hatake laughs them out of his office and Shikamaru is left with only his hand for the rest of his life, like he’s thirteen all over again and forever.

“Let’s just get this over with,” he grumbles, taking his fist to the door a hair too hard to be called respectful.

“I believe we were here first, Listless,” Sai slurs, seemingly unbothered by Temari now poking at his uninjured cheek with her foot. “If you want to get reprimanded too, maybe you should get in line.”

Temari makes a show of looking over both of her shoulders. “Who’s getting reprimanded?”

“Me, I’m sure,” comes Hatake’s dry drawl from the doorway. “By the custodial staff. There’s an acceptable blood threshold in the foyer, and I think we have passed it for the day.”

“We could clean it ourselves!” Lee offers, bolting upright. The medical chuunin gives a single, dry sob.

“We could also not,” Sai says reasonably. “I understand people don’t like feeling that their jobs are being encroached on by others.”

“You’re right, we’d just offend them…” Lee mutters. “You’re very sharp, Sai! Let’s clean it to the acceptable threshold, though, at least. That way they won’t be facing an undue burden at our cause, and won’t take it as a slight to their abilities, either! Lord Sixth, what is that limit? Fifteen milliliters? Twenty? I —”

“Lee,” Hatake interrupts gently. “Let the nurse look at you, first. I hate to keep a lady waiting, and Temari—”

“Captain is a _liar_ ,” Sai coos gently, almost sing-song, almost definitely concussed.

“You hit him hard enough to liquefy his brain,” Temari hums. “Good job, Lee. That’s impressive.”

“This is all such a pain in my _ass_ ,” Shikamaru hisses. He feels a vein pulsing in his forehead and _knows_ he looks like his mother as he grabs Temari by the arm and all but bodily shoves Hatake back into his office, slamming the door behind them.

“As Hokage,” Hatake begins mildly, “I don’t know if I should accept such treatment from my subordinates.”

“As the _idiot_ who covers your chair and your _ass_ when you and Gai sneak off to neck in your old folks home or wherever it is you go, I think I’ve earned some leeway.”

“Preposterous,” Hatake sniffs, falling back into his seat with a careless grace. “Firstly, it’s a senior living _community._ Secondly, I would never make excuses or expect you to cover for me doing such a thing.”

“And what do you expect, then?” Shikamaru grinds out.

Hatake smiles, eyes crinkling shut. “I expect people to fucking wait,” he says pleasantly. “Now, what’s got you channeling your mother so early on a Tuesday, Nara?”

“I’ll tell her you said that,” Shikamaru warns darkly, enjoying the answering blanche on Hatake’s face.

“It’s three in the afternoon,” Temari adds. A pause. “It’s also Thursday.”

Hatake waves the objections away airily. “Semantics.”

For a minute, Shikamaru’s decision is very easy. Anything to get away from this mercurial, obnoxious, _troublesome_ —

“Let me go to Suna,” he blurts out artlessly, wholly abandoning the planned arguments he walked in with and any sentimental feelings about his home still lingering in his chest.

“‘Kay.”

“I know, but Aburame could take over my — what? What? Okay?”

Hatake shrugs. “I don’t know who else the good lady would have asked for besides you. Thanks for telling me or whatever, though. Officially. And volunteering to delegate your duties yourself before you leave so I don’t have to. When are you two taking off?”

“‘Good Lady,’” Temari echoes, rolling her eyes. “You’re shameless, Hatake. Unbelievable.”

“Naruto would believe it,” Hatake points out affably, and Temari groans at the lame joke. Shikamaru doesn’t have it in him to join, because his brain is entirely occupied with the _click-click-click_ of pieces falling into place in his dumb, moronic, _thick_ skull.

“Temari,” he breathes. “What did you come here for? Your mission?”

“We’re rebuilding the Leaf embassy, like I told you.” Temari doesn’t, as a rule, attempt the kind of wide-eyed innocence schtick that Ino is sometimes prone to trying when caught red-handed in a lie. But her face is arranged in less of a scowl than it maybe should be, if she were being honest, and there’s a glint in her eye like a challenge. “We’d like some input on personnel and construction while we finish, Mr. Temporary Ambassador.”

“Something wrong?” Hatake asks, looking _entirely_ too pleased with his chin propped up on his fist, his pornographic novel held aloft in his other hand.

“Just having an aneurysm,” Shikamaru grunts, pinching the bridge of his nose. _Played again!_

“Ah. Well, if that’s all, then…” Hatake trails off delicately, raising his book in a clear dismissal.

Temari tries to catch his gaze as they turn heel and exit the office, but Shikamaru will have none of it. As they enter into the foyer, he’s struck by a sudden spirit of meanness.

“Lee,” he calls out lightly, interrupting the medical chuunin trying to re-set Lee’s fingers. “Hatake had to settle something with Ibiki at the Station, but he told me to ask you to find him later. He wants to spar, he was really impressed with that last combo you did.”

From behind the closed door to the Hokage’s office a strangled, choked off noise cuts through Lee’s enthusiastic reply. Temari good-naturedly rolls Sai over with her foot so his face is smooshed in the carpet — (“Thank you, ma’am,” and, _oh_ , he and Sai are more alike than Shikamaru is able to dwell on, right now) — as they leave to descend the stairs. They don’t speak until making it back to the diplomatic suite, and before Shikamaru has even thought to _think_ of a plan he snatches one of the senbon still on the floor from earlier and holds it to Temari’s jugular, pressing her up against the wall.

“I am,” he begins, stilted, “very annoyed.”

“And I am a very patient person,” Temari says after a long pause, even and measured and slow. “And despite my usual good judgement, I love you. I want you to know both of those things right now, because it’s the only reason why you aren’t dead.”

Shikamaru rolls his eyes, sticking the senbon down the front of her shirt, held up between her skin and her bra.

“That’s just how you are all the time,” he _tsk_ s, watching her fish the senbon out between her breasts with interest despite himself. “You said the same thing when I brought you black tea instead of green the other day for breakfast.”

“And I maintain my rightness in doing so. All the black tea you people make here tastes like dishwater.”

With a huff, Shikamaru bends to press his forehead to the swoop where her neck becomes shoulder. Her hands come up and rub absently at his sides, pushing his vest open so he can feel her warm, rough skin through his shirt.

“Did I pass your dumb test, then?”

He feels the low, answering _hm_ in her throat vibrate against his cheek as one of her hands comes up to loose his hair from its tie, untangling the knots with her fingers. It’s as much of an apology as he’ll get, though the further out from Hatake’s office they get the less sure he is that he wants one, much less is owed it.

“I’ll never see that hair tie again,” he murmurs some time later, when his brain is finally quiet and still and he’s only picturing the far off certainty of fine, gritty sand in their bed and how few clouds there are in the desert, all twining between the soft threads of the _Temari Temari Temari_ loop still insistent in his ears.

“How will you manage to live on without it?” Temari muses, raking her blunt nails up the nape of his neck. He can’t suppress a little shiver, and he _feels_ her smugness, somehow, without even seeing her face.

“You’ll have to make it up to me,” he shrugs, knowing full well how likely that is and not really caring.

“How about you apologize to me for being a colossal moron, first?”

Shikamaru is unsure which of his many mistakes he’s supposed to be repentant over: for not assuming she had a plan to get him to Suna beforehand, for not letting her stab him with the dango sticks like she wanted to earlier, for insinuating any ownership of his own hair ties, or for being an idiot in general, but it’s fine. He leans down to hook his arms underneath the heavy muscle in her legs and carries her over to the low couch.

_Suna_ , she said, _just to try_. He’s been prepared to do worse for her since they were at least chuunin. This is nothing. Her smile is all teeth when he lets her fall back onto the chaise, and Shikamaru decides for what is maybe the millionth time that it’s one worth apologizing for.

He sinks down to press a kiss to the side of her knee. "Let's work something out, then."


	2. II. Literacy

II.

The desert, frankly, blows.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he says baldly, for perhaps the fifty-seventh time that day. “Suna is a wasteland and I don’t love you enough for this.”

“You have to,” Temari shoots back easily, adjusting the rich purple headscarf protecting the lower half of her face. “To risk my family overhearing you say that makes you a brave, lovesick idiot. Admit it. It’s why you wouldn’t let me go when we stopped to eat yesterday —”

“ _There were scorpions infesting that cave_ —”

“This is the desert,” she sighs, like she’s speaking to a small child. “Scorpions _live_ here. This is their house, they aren’t _infesting_ anything.”

That's a fair and good point, so Shikamaru ignores it. “...Your brothers couldn’t hear me anyway, we aren’t even halfway to the capital, much less your house,” he mutters after a moment, wiping sweat from under his own head covering.

They’ve settled in one of the bumfuggle outposts littered between the Leaf and the Sand to wait out the hottest part of the day, and in the tiny dugout, Temari looks at him like he is the biggest goddamn idiot to have ever walked the face of the earth. Shikamaru loves her like a punch to the gut that keeps coming over and over again until she shoves her canteen at him.

“I keep telling you that you aren’t drinking enough. If you get dehydrated and can’t keep up, I’ll leave you.”

“I’ve gone through two more bottles than you have,” he points out. “You were complaining not three hours ago that I was going through them too quickly and we would run out before making it.”

“This one is special, though.”

Shikamaru sits up from where he was sprawled on the floor, careful to not bang his head on the low ceiling.

“Special?” He asks, already gulping some down greedily.

“Mm. It’s got respect women juice in it. I think it will help you shut the fuck up for a while.”

“I hate you,” Shikamaru groans, taking another large swig from the bottle and leaning back with a thump.

“Imagine how I felt trekking by myself to Konoha this whole time,” she sighs theatrically. “And for what?”

“Sex?”

“Could have done that at home.”

“There’s that teahouse you like by Choji’s.”

“Fair, but for the amount of trips I make? Questionable.”

“Yeah, you could always just learn to cook things yourself,” Shikamaru offers innocently, catching her foot when it swings out to kick him in the ribs. He rubs the knob of her ankle as he continues. “I suppose there’s only one other explanation.” He leans up, pulling his own scarf aside to look at her clearly. “My animal magnetism,” he deadpans. “I’m sorry it’s inconvenienced you for so long. I thought it only was a burden to me.”

“Yes, all the honeypot missions you get must wear you out.”

“Since Uchiha’s mostly AWOL, someone has to do it.” He stops himself short, still gripping Temari’s ankle as the errant thought takes control of his mouth before his brain has time to filter it. “Hey. You know, I’ve never asked y— when’s the last time you had to—? I mean...those types of. I. Gaara doesn’t, does he? Make you do th—”

“Don’t hurt yourself there,” she says crisply, pulling her leg back from his grip.

It’s quiet in the outpost. It’s hardly a cave, even, just a crevasse made with some rough, hardly passable doton work in the middle of the barren stretch between the northernmost Leaf and southwesternmost Sand. The arid wind starting to pick up speed from the outside echoes a bit in the space, and Shikamaru’s ears ring from it, his nose dripping from the sand it blows inside.

On their way here, Shikamaru struggled imagining things to superimpose on the landscape whizzing by; anything at all to make it less monotonous than flat, red dirt for miles. Now, however, his terrible, good for nothing brain has no problem inventing all manner of sights for him to view: Temari, her smooth, graceful neck bent uncharacteristically demure in a bathhouse somewhere. Temari, in a shogi parlor, her kimono sleeves slipping just high enough to peek her narrow, sleek wrists as she pours another glass of sake. Temari, laid flat on her back or stomach underneath foreign hands. Worse still, unfamiliar hands grabbing, or touching, or even unfamiliar eyes _looking_ , and Temari unable to fight them off, not until the mission was completed. She was too good a shinobi to tolerate a failure. She would do what she had to do, even if she hated it — _and isn’t that what she’d been doing, coming to the Leaf this whole time?_ he thinks, a sharp, nasty pang in his stomach. _Haven’t you been making her do something she hated, too?_

“I notice,” he fumbles, mouth and throat dry from maybe more than just having trekked through the mesa, “that you didn’t answer my question.”

“Kunoichi have special obligations, sometimes. More than other shinobi,” she says stiffly. “Does that only bother you when you think of me doing it? Kiba mentioned having to do one when we went out last week, and you didn’t seem bothered.”

“Still not an answer.”

“We’ve got a long while still to go,” Temari sighs. She’s looking at his shoulder and not at his face. “Do you want it to be miserable the whole way?”

In the dumb, moronic, _thick_ cup of his skull, Shikamaru hears the faint _click, click, click_ of a few new game pieces falling into place.

_Ah, shit._

“Hey.” He sits up, crouching close to her even as she studiously turns away from him. He unceremoniously shoves all actual thoughts and feelings he may be having about this particular revelation into a “DO NOT OPEN” box in the back of his brain and sets all the pistons of his mental prowess to “FIX IT, DUMBASS.” “I’m not — uh. Ah, shit. Why am I no good at this? I’m not j-judging you? Mad at you? Jealous? Uh. Whatever negative thing that you think I am feeling, I am in fact not feeling it. Directed at you. Uh. And maybe not at all?”

Temari is very quiet, even when he reaches out to cup her cheek in what he feels, personally, is a tender, empathetic gesture. Choji and Ino both said that Shikamaru was largely emotionally illiterate, but here he is, in a miserable desert cave, with his questionably legitimate fiance, having just called into question her integrity as a shinobi and their personal sexual history to boot, doing just great.

“I think I’m going to string you up and drag you through the streets when we get home,” she says finally. It feels like a dismissal but not at all like they are _finished_ with it.

“Don’t do me any favors,” he shoots back lightly, trying but failing to not feel stung when she ducks away from the kiss he tries to land on her temple.

“Sun’s about to set. Let’s go.”

* * *

“If I wanted to race Gai to Suna, I would have just asked him!” Shikamaru wheezes, clutching the _exquisitely_ painful stitch in his side with weak, trembling hands. His chest is ice cold and useless no matter that his clothes, sopping wet in places and stiff with salt and sand in others, are plastered to him with the dregs of the days boiling heat like they can’t escape the cotton. His legs cramp like Kaguya herself is squeezing them when he can feel their wobbling, throbbing muscle at all, his feet swollen and blistered bloody in his boots. And the _sunburn._ Even though he’d been careful, before their full-tilt marathon began, to keep his skin from being exposed, he’s buzzing and smarting all over; where his skin hasn’t been chafed raw is bubbling up with sun poisoning.

“Is everything alright?”

Flinching reflexively, Shikamaru straightens as much as he’s able. Temari is out of breath and red-faced beside him, propped up with her fan against the wall to her family’s home and seemingly content to not answer her brother’s question.

The first few attempts at speech he makes are useless, noiseless gasps. The heat melted his _brain_ , it must have, it’s why his vision is swimming —

“An ambush?” Gaara asks again, his raspy voice low and even still, though perhaps a hair more impatient at having to ask twice.

“ _No_ ,” Shikamaru manages finally, his throat raw and pulpy. “J-jus’...r-r-ran. F...f-fast.”

“Well,” Gaara offers after a moment, looking Temari over head to toe before returning his gaze to Shikamaru, expression carefully blank. “You _are_ ninja.”

From behind him, Kankuro stumbles noisily out onto the entryway, and Shikamaru struggles to find the combined oxygen and brain power to groan. Ninja only made noise when they were trying to make a _point_ . Shikamaru is too damn _hot_ and too damn _tired_ for _points._

“It is,” Kankuro begins, squinting against the sun and scratching at his bare chest, “ _three forty two in the afternoon_ . Can we _please_ rain check the _bullshit_ for business hours tomorrow?” He points an accusatory finger in Temari’s direction, seemingly heedless of the fact that he’s wearing pajama pants with little cartoon tanukis on them and looks patently ridiculous. “In case you were in Konoha too long and forgot, _one_ of your brothers does like to sleep!”

“G-Gaara,” Temari grunts, wiping at her brow and pushing off from the wall on uneasy legs, “you were always...my favorite.”

“Oh, fuck _you,_ ” Kankuro snaps, turning on his heel and marching back into the house. “Say whatever you want, he tried to kill you more than he did me before his give-a-damn grew in—”

Gaara cocks his head to the side thoughtfully. “Mm. I wonder.”

Kankuro pivots on the spot, pointing threateningly at his brother, face very red. “—That is _revisionist history_ , Gaara!”

Temari doesn’t so much as spare Gaara or Shikamaru a glance before launching forward, getting an arm around Kankuro’s neck so she’s plastered to his back. Barely slowed, he pulls her forward no matter that she’s squeezing his throat and jabbing at his side with a poorly aimed kunai just barely held in her shaking hand. Shikamaru and Gaara stand at the entryway until their bickering has been completely swallowed up by the house.

“You should apologize to our sentries tomorrow. They thought Madara himself had come back from the dead.” He pauses. “Again.”

Shikamaru grunts. Despite himself, he’s rocking side to side on his heavy, good for nothing feet, hardly able to balance on his noodly, good for nothing legs. _Don’t fall over, don’t you fucking fall over, don’t you fucking do it, don’t you dare —_

Gaara hums across from him, low in his throat. He’s in loose, nondescript robes and barefoot, perhaps the closest to sleepwear that he’s capable of getting. With a soft command, an ANBU with a mask like a parrot jumps from the neighboring roof to Gaara’s feet, landing in a smooth, practiced kneel.

“Have Rei clear a little time out after his shift at the hospital tomorrow to meet our guest. I’m sure it’s nothing a little water and rest won’t fix, but,” Gaara pauses, studying Shikamaru with an expression more blank than any ANBU mask. “But I want to make sure he’ll be alright to return to the Leaf. I’d hate to have him stranded in a wasteland because he didn’t get cared for here.”

_Ah, shit._

Shikamaru falls gracelessly against the wall as the front door closes behind Gaara. He’s still mostly on the floor when several wary ANBU finish their game of rock, paper, scissors some time later to decide who is unlucky enough to have to haul him off the entryway.

* * *

Temari is out for nearly two full days, and Shikamaru is out for another seven or so hours still after she’s up and moving, from what he pieces together between bouts of unconsciousness. Scrubbing a hand over his face, he slips from underneath the layers of cool, damp blankets that have been laid over him and stumbles to his feet. The only balm, he imagines, to getting heat stroke after running a breakneck pace through half a desert would probably be waking up curled around Temari, maybe with a hand knotted in her impossibly thick hair or with his face buried in his neck, her knee wedged between his. The second, since the first was obviously not meant for him in this lifetime, was as much water and coffee as the damned desert could offer him, simultaneously and immediately.

He’s been in Temari's family home only once before, and though that’s usually enough to memorize the layout of any space for Regular Shikamaru, Desert Hangover Shikamaru doesn’t seem to have such luck. Worse yet is that he’s been put up in a guest room instead of Temari’s bedroom— and he refuses to mull over the implications of that without any caffeine, he _refuses_ — so when he tries to make a left, which should lead him to the kitchen, he winds up nearly knocking into Temari, shutting the door to her bedroom with her loose hair standing up at all ends. She’s wearing one of his shirts with holes littered at the collar and the hem, her face puffy and peeling from the sunburn, her bare legs bruised in places and perhaps, though Shikamaru is an only child and can’t say for sure, too visible for her brother’s company.

Shikamaru feels like he’s going to fall over again.

“I was just coming to wake you up,” she says hoarsely. “You need to eat. They’ve had you off the IV for almost a day now, lazy ass.”

He scratches only absently at the bandage around the crook of his arm, matching the one on hers. “You gonna cook it for me?”

Her glare is watery as she pushes past him, hooking two fingers into the waist of his sweats as an afterthought that she drags along behind her.

“It’s pretty quiet,” he mumbles, after a stretch of stony silence lands them in Temari’s barren kitchen. “Without, uh. Your brothers around.”

“A lot of work to maintain the wasteland,” she shrugs, flinging a bottle of water at him before marching over to the coffee pot. She’s worse for wear even if she’s putting on a brave face; he has to make a sudden dive forward to catch the water bottle that doesn’t reach him by at least a foot.

“Temari,” he sighs, looking heavenward. “I’m sorry.”

She places the coffee in front of him on the counter before busying herself in making a silent pot of tea. He reaches for her once, but when she ducks away from his hand he doesn’t try again.

He gulps down half the water in one go, resolutely ignoring Ino’s imagined voice in his ear chiding him about piggish behavior and other medical mumbo-jumbo about making himself sick, before pushing Temari away from the stove.

“Let me.”

She quirks an eyebrow, reaching for her tea and moving to a barstool. “You must really feel bad.”

He ignores her even though he really, really does not want to let that go unchallenged, and begins to rummage in their cabinets and fridge. It’s dark out, and since most of Suna begins its day at dusk to avoid the leeching desert heat, she’s probably expecting breakfast. Unfortunately, even if Shikamaru wanted to stretch his culinary muscles, they don’t have so much as a packet of instant miso to their name.

Shikamaru shuts the fridge door, scrunching his eyes shut as he counts his options. Warily, he cracks it open again, barely two inches this time, as if he’s trying to keep its horrors locked inside.

Rice. They have some rice. Shikamaru can probably do rice.

Asuma taught them how the Twelve prayed, once, and Shikamaru does his best to mouth the words silently and in the correct order as he starts a small pot in the little rice cooker on their counter. He pours her another cup of the strong, spiced black tea she always complains about missing when in the Leaf as she watches him, face as carefully blank as her youngest brother’s tends to be.

Sweat prickling his scalp, he tries the fridge again. Juice. Some soy sauce. Three small peppers. A few beers. Two half-empty takeout containers, and in the back —

In the back, a plain white box with a pillowy dorayaki and a half.

(Behind it, a single egg in a worn-for-wear carton.)

Perhaps the prayer thing worked, after all.

He straightens with his loot, fumbling around their disaster of a kitchen for bowls and chopsticks until the rice cooker beeps. He scoops out a small serving before cracking the egg over it, jabbing the yolk with one of the chopsticks and giving it a good stir.

Shikamaru tops off her cup with the remaining tea before slowly pushing the box of dorayaki and the bowl of egg rice forward.

“Hm.”

“You like chestnuts,” he offers lamely, after a very long pause where Temari stares at her breakfast. “A lot. And you can have sweets for breakfast under, uh. Circumstances.”

After another moment of silence, Shikamaru sits on the barstool next to her and grabs the dorayaki, tearing off a small piece. She accepts it easily enough when he brings it to her mouth, and even if it’s stilted at first they fall into a silent rhythm until her bowl and tea cup are empty.

Temari stops him when he tries to feed her the last bite of dorayaki, her calloused hand wrapping around his wrist, thumb barely brushing the pulse there.

“Take care of yourself before you try to baby others,” she huffs, but her cheeks are a little darker than usual. It could be the sunburn, but Shikamaru thinks it could _also_ be something else. She nimbly takes the dorayaki from his fingers and puts it to his lips, instead.

“Filling.” He follows the little sweet with a swig of his now cold coffee, and catches Temari’s jaw in his hand when she moves to rise from her seat. “I understand,” he says slowly. It feels bigger than “I’m sorry,” which is closer to Shikamaru’s meaning. “What you said. I get it, it’s just…”

Temari catches his other hand between hers, drawing it into her lap.

“I don't like thinking about it. For you. For anyone else.” Before he can steel himself away from the memory, behind his eyelids Shikamaru sees the first time Ino flinches away from Asuma’s hand as it passes over the crown of her head, congratulatory, after mastering a new suiton; sees her turning away from Chouji’s bulk when they go out for dinner the next week after, murmuring to Sakura and Tenten too low for him to hear; sees her from where he perched in the tree outside of her bedroom window, keeping watch until she fell asleep, and then still until the morning after. He sees all the _maybe-could have-possibly_ s for whatever missions Temari’s taken that Shikamaru won’t ever know about.

“Mm. Imagine how I feel.”

He clears his throat and the shame away with it, for now. “I was being an ass. I understand. I just. You’re— to _me_ , I —”

Temari waves him off, cheeks decidedly redder than before. “I’ve known you were an ass since you were twelve. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised.”

Rolling his eyes, Shikamaru leans forward, prepared to kiss her temple in an emotionally literate ending to an emotionally literate morning — when a loud groan cuts through the kitchen from the hall.

“Are you done? Are you finished? Excuse me—” Kankuro pokes his head in through the door, knocking on the frame theatrically. “Can I please get a, _uh_ , moment of peace in my own home?”

“Are you playing hooky?” Temari asks, eyes narrowed, while Shikamaru lets his forehead _thunk_ solidly against the bartop. “Did you finally get fired?”

“Reassigned. I’m playing chaperone until Nara gets to debrief with Gaara and Grandpa Baki.”

“ _Chaperone_?” Temari and Shikamaru echo, respectively disgusted and wary.

“That’s what _I_ said. But Nara hasn’t been awake long enough to accept the official mission blah-blah from _Lord_ Kazekage, so as an unofficial, useless drifter, he has to have an escort.”

Temari points at herself, brow furrowed. “Fuck am I, then?”

“That’s what _I_ said,” Kankuro shrugs. “But he’s on Gaara’s shit list, so like, good luck with asking for favors like that. If you want, Baki can take my place—”

“I’ll kill you,” Temari hisses. “Don’t you dare.”

Shikamaru cradles his head in his hands, the heels of his palms digging into his eyelids so little stars explode beneath the pressure.

“Shit list, huh?” He echoes weakly. After a brief pause, Temari joins her brother in laughing at his _abject misery_ , but she squeezes his knee under the table while doing so, and Shikamaru can’t even be mad about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> I was trying to work out how to pull myself up from a really big slump when I figured I'd take advantage of falling down the Magic Ninja Fandom hole again. This is me writing just because I enjoy it, without worrying about editing...consistency...tone...whatever. Just trying to remember how fun it can be to write & share something, even if it's a little silly. To that end, I originally planned for ZERO angst, fights, or misunderstandings in this piece, but...¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ It's all good-natured trolling from here on out, at least.
> 
> Anyway! If you want to talk more about magic ninjas, Shikamaru living the lesbian dream, and/or what egregious nerds the Sand Siblings are, you can drop me a line here or on [tumblr](http://smolhombre.tumblr.com).
> 
> See you in Part 3!


	3. III. Brothers

III. 

Gaara pours Shikamaru a silent cup of tea after silently beckoning him into his office. They drink it in silence. It’s nearly daybreak, and outside Suna has since wound down to sleep the worst of the day’s looming heat away. From the many windows haloing the ornamental Kazekage desk, it’s just silent pink light streaming through.

Shikamaru prefers the quiet, normally. He reminds himself how often he wished for this very reprieve when pulling an all-nighter in the Hokage’s office, trying to tune out Hatake and Yamato’s good-natured bickering over Naruto’s frequent, decibel-breaking interjections that _no one was listening to him, hello, why —_

“You are recovered.”

Shikamaru nearly flinches at the unexpected noise. Unsure if it was a question or a statement, he settles for a little shrug and another sip of his tea.

“Thanks for that.”

Gaara’s eyes narrow a fraction, and Shikamaru is left with the unsettling feeling that he’s missed a step going down the stairs.

“You’ve apologized to Temari.”

Shikamaru decides that if he takes a deep enough drink from his cup with his eyes closed, he can pretend it’s drugged with a Haruno-sized tranquilizer and that sweet, blissful unconsciousness is about to swallow him whole.

“I did.”

“I do not ask my sister to have sex with strangers, by and large. To address your concern.”

Shikamaru wants to die, he wants to _die_ ; he wants the Desert Coffin, he wants a legion of White Zetsu, he wants the gaping maw of a Tailed Beast —

Gaara frowns. “What is the face you are making right now?”

“I’m hoping this tea is poisoned,” Shikamaru sighs, weary to the point of reflexive honesty.

“Unfortunately, Temari knows I won’t kill her now, so I’m not safe from her rage anymore,” Gaara says drily. There are small cardamom and fennel cookies on the tea tray between them, and he bites into one absently before staring off into the space above Shikamaru’s head for a brief beat like he’s working out an invisible knot in some thread. “For some reason, because she loves me now it means she is liable to physically hurt me like she wouldn’t try to before. What a puzzle. I’d last longer than you would if she tried to fight me, but I’d definitely still die.” He looks back down at Shikamaru, eyes nearly the same green as Temari’s, but not. “So, to my true and earnest regret, I have to wait for someone else to poison you.”

_Here’s hoping anyway._ Shikamaru finishes the rest of his tea with a little flourish. “Kankuro wasn’t exaggerating about the shit-list, huh?”

“It’s highly curated these days. I’ve cut a lot of people off of it. Some would consider it an honor to be on there still.” Gaara’s smile is so small it’s nearly negligible, but it makes him look more like his sister all the same and Shikamaru forces himself to relax a little in his chair. It would be easier, maybe, to be speaking with the Kazekage and not with Temari’s Brother, but they’ve had to do hard things for each other before.

“Thanks,” he says again, meaning it a little more this time. Gaara only shrugs one shoulder, eating another cookie. The silence following is probably amicable.

“You will probably wish I had murdered you, though,” Gaara offers suddenly. Something in his expression is newly assessing and attentive; Shikamaru dares to call it a little more _alive_ than usual. “The council isn’t as pleasant as I am, and they’re already upset you couldn’t attend the first meeting we planned. It’s also largely past their bedtime. Very nasty people, to outsiders especially.”

Shikamaru snorts before he can stop himself, raising a pointed brow at Gaara before making a purposeful show of grabbing one of the cookies. Gaara blinks back, placid, and in his usual, soft deadpan:

“I am a kitten, comparatively.”

He chokes on the biscuit in his mouth. Gaara watches him impassively until Shikamaru is able to straighten, red faced, wheezing, and teary-eyed.

* * *

Kankuro greets them gruffly just as Shikamaru has the last crumbs cleared from his lungs. Gaara, who had long since resumed the paperwork on his desk while Shikamaru clung to life in the chair opposite, looks up to the doorway with his eyebrow raised expectantly.

“Shunko caught me in the hallway,” Kankuro grunts, rubbing the space between his eyebrows. The paint there doesn’t smudge at all. “Nara owes me. Temari owes me. The whole state of our diplomatic relations with the Leaf is entirely dependent on my _unending suffering_.”

Gaara’s brow creases in what might be sympathy, but could also be general displeasure, and potentially also heartburn. Kankuro eyes Shikamaru critically. “He made you cry already? I thought you’d at least last an hour before you broke.”

“He said he was a kitten. What chance do I have against that?”

Kankuro blinks at him owlishly. “I...don’t want to know. Let’s just go and get this over with. Temari will meet us there. She’s already gotten into it with Junichi, I heard them going at it from two halls over.” Here, he pauses thoughtfully. “She’s in a mood and a half. Maybe you _will_ look like a kitten, Gaara. Comparatively.”

Gaara doesn’t look _smug_ , as a rule his face doesn’t move enough to show so much expression. But Shikamaru gets the impression anyway as Gaara leads them out the door.

“As I said, Nara.”

He hums under his breath as the three of them navigate the halls, the soft sound so incongruous with _Gaara_ that Shikamaru questions if his tea was poisoned, after all, and this is just a fever dream. As they turn a corner, Kankuro flicks his brother on the back. The tiny gourd of sand slung at Gaara’s hip doesn’t give so much as a rustle.

“Knock it off. You can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

Gaara shrugs one shoulder, hardly perceptible under the layers of his robes. “I could hire someone to carry it for me. They always complain our staff isn’t as large as when the Fourth was in office. Perhaps they’ll take that bait instead of trying to skewer Nara to the wall.”

“That attitude will get you assassinated before we even make it to the council room.”

“Bold of you to assume I want to live long enough to attend the meeting to begin with.”

Shikamaru stumbles on Gaara’s other side, nearly landing face first into a shelf of heirloom clay pottery.

* * *

“I thought…” Shikamaru trails off suddenly, taking a drag from his cigarette and staring out onto the sea of glazed earth roofs around him. His brain feels a little mushy. What, exactly, did his dumb ass _think_?

He clears his throat and starts from the first place he can grab onto. “I was under the impression that the ‘Princess’ thing was always a joke, on your part.”

Temari, laid flat on the roof beside him, snatches the smoke from his fingers. She only smokes when her nerves are irreparably shot to shit, but after the council negotiations they’ve just had to endure, he can’t fault her for being frazzled.

He also gets to watch the bob of her smooth throat as she breathes in, her nose scrunching up a little in the process, since she has never learned to appreciate the taste, so maybe he’s not entirely selfless. He lets her keep it as he pulls another one from the pack in his vest pocket.

“It’s only a big deal if you make it a big deal,” she hums finally. “The daimyo’s family has branched off so far from ours now it matters more to you heathens than to anyone in Suna, unless it’s a high holiday.”

“Us heathens and the utter gems on your Council, apparently. They were upset I dared to look you in the eye. When I didn’t use your title I thought the weedy looking one was going to seize.”

The corners of her mouth go tight, and she takes a very deep drag from the smoke. Kankuro was the sibling who was burdened with looking most like their father, but when Temari’s face is set and drawn like this, she’s not free from resemblance, either. Shikamaru hates it mostly because he knows Temari does. Now, perhaps, would be a good time for a tactical retreat. A diversion before they went to bed: he’d take a smile or a solid punch if it meant wiping this expression away. Anything but this.

“Well,” she begins stiffly, “at least you can see why I wanted to avoid _that_ conversation on your first day.”

“If you don’t actually want to get married, you know, I won’t feel any different.” His neck and cheeks are on fire from saying something so dumb, but he reminds himself that Temari liked him best like this, anyway.

“Scared you off already, huh?”

_Ah, shit._ He takes two deep drags, then another just for good measure as he extracts his foot from his mouth.

“When we met with the Hokage about the actual mission, I thought you had been joking about it the whole time. I thought it was a test, and it was fine.”

Temari raises the smoke to her mouth and breathes in, easy and casual in a remarkably practiced, transparent way.

“But once I really thought about it,” he continues, leaning back and rolling to his side so he can study her profile, “I wasn’t ready to let it go yet. I’m still not. It’s what I meant, and it’s what I want. But if you don’t want it, I’ll wait, because I want you more. If you can deign to lower yourself to humor me, _Lady_ Temari, I’ll convince your dumb council. I’ll make it work. You don’t need to worry about it.”

She puffs away on the smoke quietly. She snubs it out and doesn’t look at him. It’s encouragement, from Temari. He snuffs his own out, too.

“What I mean is,” he grins, edging a little closer. “Please don’t try to break my foot again. I won’t bring it up until you do.”

“I hardly stepped on it as hard as I could.”

“Now you’re just bragging.”

“It’s your own fault if you can’t keep your mouth shut. I know the Leaf doesn’t produce great ninja, but even you should know a little about nonverbal communication.”

“You’re right. I just wanted you to touch me.”

Temari huffs, scrubbing both hands over her face. She’s almost smiling. That’s encouragement, from Temari, and Shikamaru keeps going.

“Neither of your brothers know, either?”

“Do you want to tell them?” She shoots back. “I say we avoid it until we’re serious. Serious-serious. The day-of serious, maybe. Maybe even after we’ve gone and eloped somewhere. Maybe never. They’ll make fun of me forever and I don’t want to deal with it.”

A fair point, but it’s not doing much in the way of making Temari feel better, so Shikamaru shelves it for later. “Your darling and youngest brother called himself a kitten today.”

Temari chokes on air, sitting up abruptly and waving him off when he tries to slap her back a few times.

“He— he _what_?”

Shikamaru reaches out when she’s finally caught her breath, palm flat to the side of her neck. His thumb traces the little line where he can feel her heartbeat under her skin, and he smiles lazily. “That’s what I said.”

His fingers are tangled in the baby hairs at the nape of her neck, his thumb nestled where her jaw becomes her ear. He’s killed someone before in this same grip, has seen her snap more than one person’s neck in a similar fashion, but still she allows him to cup her face like this. It feels like an _I love you_ more than anything they could try to say. That’s encouragement, so Shikamaru keeps going.

Temari allows him to move, his chest flat to her back and his legs bracketing her body as he pulls them close. _Temari. Temari. Mine. Closer. Warm. Comfortable. Good. Good. Temari._ “Maybe he would take it in stride, is all I’m suggesting.”

“Yes, he’s taken most of his life in stride thus far.”

Shikamaru shrugs one shoulder, wrapping his arms around her stocky middle. The sun is the buttery yellow of midmorning, and it is almost unbearably hot already. He settles in, though, prepared to wait and sweat and suffer until she initiates the move inside. “Still. Just so you know, I’m asking again, and I mean it. I’ll keep asking.” A pause. Shikamaru is an _idiot_ for saying it, but — “And if you want, I’ll break it to Gaara when you decide.”

“Sounds like a promise, to me.” Temari leans back so her head lolls on his shoulder and she can press her forehead to the side of his neck.

“Yes, _Princess_.”

She pinches his thigh so hard a few tears prick the corners of his eyes.

A title would complicate things, but it’s fine. Shikamaru has navigated worse, and for less. He watches the blistering sun bleach the town below while rearranging their board in his head, his face in her hair. _Temari. Temari. Temari. Hot. Too hot. Heatstroke? No. Not yet. Move? Hm, too comfortable. Mine. Temari. Good. Good._

It _is_ good, and Shikamaru is content to stay there remembering why he came to Suna in the first place until Temari gives a soft snore in front of him.

_That’s that, then._

He carries her prone figure back to her bedroom while studiously ignoring the ANBU flocking him too closely to be strictly regulation. He’s still an outsider, and Suna is possessive of all its people, much less its High Family, so Shikamaru will just have to deal with their bullshit for now. It’s fine, he’s got other things to focus on. His chest being warm from more than just the desert heat chief among them; Temari didn’t wake or stir when he moved her because she trusted him more than people in their profession were strictly advised to do. That’s his, he’s earned it. In the quiet of his own mind, Shikamaru resolves to keep earning it, and also to never speak that promise aloud. Temari would never let him live it down.

She grabs his shoulders when he tries to lay her flat on her bed, keeping him pinned close to her body. He looks up to her face, but Temari is still feigning sleep, save the vice-like grip clawing into his arms and neck.

“You faker.”

“First hand, you know that I’m not.”

Her eyes stay closed, even when Shikamaru starts kissing a trail from her ear to her collar.

“Lower,” she hums.

Shikamaru pauses, looking back to the door. He’d put a seal on the doorjamb out of habit, like he would his own, but it wouldn’t hold against any of the ANBU assigned to their house or —

Temari gives his hair a none too gentle tug.

“That’s not a sound proofing seal,” he says lowly, sliding a hand under her shirt.

“I’ll be quiet.”

“First hand, I know that you’re not,” he smirks, taking the little slap to the back of his head in stride. She’s smiling now, finally, and that’s more than worth it.

Shikamaru cups her breast as he leans down for a slow, lazy kiss. Temari allows the easy pace with more grace than usual, angling her hips so she can grind against the muscle in his thigh languidly. He presses closer to give her more friction, laughing when she takes the opening to latch her legs around his waist.

“You’re worse than a spur.”

“Cry me a river, Nara. People have real problems, not just their girlfriend wanting to get in their pants.”

“We’ve got all day, Princess.” He dodges her swipe at his head this time, chuckling as he unties the ribboned belts around her shirt. Whatever she snips back at him falls on deaf ears; Shikamaru is too busy exploring her skin with open-mouthed kisses that leave him dizzy with the smell and heat of her so close. Her soft jaw, her vulnerable neck, the swoop of her collarbone and the muscle of her shoulders, down further to the flat of her chest — he doesn’t move on to another spot until she’s squirming underneath him, making little pleading noises from her throat.

At the rise of her breast, Shikamaru slows. If he was taking his time before, Shikamaru’s pace is near glacial now. He keeps his touch and mouth soft, intermittently so gentle that he hardly brushes her skin at all. It forces her to arch forward to chase the feeling with thin keens.

“Goddamn you, hurry _up_ ,” she hisses, giving his waist a near painful squeeze with her thighs.

Shikamaru mouths at her breast through the fabric of her bra, biting down over a peaked nipple before looking up to her flushed, _beautiful_ face.

“No.”

Her furrowed brow smoothes out all at once as she _thunks_ her head back to the pillow, and Shikamaru smiles against her skin as he unclasps her bra. _Such a pain in my ass_ , he thinks, quite unspeakably fond, that she needs to fight for permission before accepting a little tenderness like this.

Mouth fully occupied at her chest, Shikamaru draws one hand back under her skirt and traces featherlight nonsense on her thigh, just to feel the goosebumps rising to the wake of his fingertips.

“Do you wanna die?” Temari pants, but her heart is audibly not in it.

He hums, mouth around her nipple, relishing the full body shiver she gives in response. “Want you to relax. Maybe one will come before the other, though.”

His hand on her thigh trails up higher, tracing the wet line through her underwear. Shikamaru pulls back with a groan to pull her skirt off, but stops himself before her panties follow.

“Enough of this. Don’t you fucking dare,” she warns him darkly.

“I do fucking dare,” he shrugs, not bothering to keep the dumb, smug grin off his face. It’s just the two of them, and she likes him looking dumb more than anything.

Almost anything. Shikamaru slides down, keeping her legs pried apart as he mouths up the heavy, solid muscle there. He sucks a bruise when he’s nearly at their apex, and Temari makes a choked off noise that crackles, electric, down his spine.

Shikamaru presses the flat of his tongue to her underwear without much further ado, (because he values his bodily safety, even if he doesn’t act like it, most days), humming absently against her breathy, low pleading to _just take them off, I swear on your life I’m going to kill you, take them off, I fucking mean it —_

It’s _good_ . The noise is muffled by her bulky thighs squeezing at his ears and his own dumb brain doing it’s familiar loop: _Temari. Temari. Temari. Mine. Louder. Again. Mine. Temari. Temari._

A torture, maybe, for both of them, to have a barrier between his mouth and her body. Half-drunk and nearly done with his own game, Shikamaru pulls the edge into his mouth, ready to tear them off, when a rasping noise starts to sound from the hallway.

He pauses.

“I know I’ve said this a lot, but I will _literally fucking kill you_ ,” Temari snarls, hands fisting in his hair and pulling.

That’s her serious voice, and there’s no way anything waiting in the hall could be scarier than that. He adjusts the hem between his teeth, and with a little chakra (Genma is a gossipy shithead, but not totally useless,) he rips them open. Groaning at the sight of her, pink and dewy and _ready_ , Shikamaru presses forward—

The noise comes again, closer, louder, insistent.

A knock.

Temari snatches the pillow next to her and smothers her scream into it. For his part, Shikamaru has frozen, stilled to marble between her legs. A migraine threatens to pinch behind his eyes.

The knock comes again.

“ _No_ !” She punctuates it with the pillow, which hits the door with a muffled _thump_.

“It’s important.”

_Gaara_. Shikamaru falls, face forward, into the tangle of sheets as Temari huffs her way up to her feet, snatching her clothes. She flings her ruined underwear at his face before storming to the door and wrenching it open. Shikamaru stares, sightless, at the ceiling and doesn’t even think to pocket them as Gaara steps into the doorway, arms crossed over his chest and expression carefully blank.

“I need you to leave for Kiri today. Before noon, if you can. Tsumi and Hiro will travel with you. They’re on their way to brief with Baki. You should join them.”

“What’s wrong?” All business, like a switch. Not for the first time, Shikamaru thinks she is much better at her job than he would ever be.

Gaara looks pointedly at Shikamaru, then back to his sister. “Baki will explain. I can’t send anyone but you.”

Temari rucks a hand through her hair, looking around for a tie. “If you weren’t my brother I would punch you in the face.” She pauses suddenly, halfway through putting her hair up one handed and reaching for one of her smaller fans on its wall hook. “That’s not right. If you were my other brother I would have _already_ punched you in the face.”

Gaara hums, noncommittal, and Shikamaru tries to ignore the weight of the Kazekage’s stare. He’s yet to move from Temari’s bed, and the longer he’s still the more convinced he becomes that moving or speaking just now would be a very bad idea.

“That’s super fucking rude, by the way,” Kankuro frowns, joining his brother in the doorway. Shikamaru's stomach sinks impossibly lower.

“His face is nicer, I’d hate to ruin it. Yours could use the help.” Temari packs her bag with practiced efficiency, bickering with her brothers all the while. She doesn’t turn to Shikamaru until she’s about to leave.

“If you’re gone when I come back, you’ll wish for death.” She flicks his ear and tucks her underwear underneath him.

“Careful, they’ll think we’re in love,” he grimaces, pinching between his eyebrows.

It’s silent for a near full minute after her chakra signature disappears from the house.

The foot of the bed dips as Kankuro flops onto it, and the rasping noise from earlier returns, sand from the small gourd at Gaara’s waist wisping up to form a palm-sized eye that floats shoulder level with the Kazekage.

Kankuro nudges his foot. Shikamaru can’t quite place the expression on his face under all the paint. “Married, huh?”

* * *

Temari comes back only a few hours later, fuming and in rare form. She slams her bedroom door hard enough the blackout curtains hanging on the windows opposite wobble, and indecently bright light slashes through the shadows of the room. Shikamaru can feel the heat of it as they settle around the sounds of her slamming dresser drawers, flinging her pouches down, thudding kunais and shuriken into the beams of the wall. 

“Try to send me on a _goddamn C-rank escort_ with two barely — I don’t even think they were _chuunins_ , they were so fucking small —”

Shikamaru, curled on his side with his face buried in her pillow and his eyes resolutely shut, _hm_ s in answer. He’s not asleep by a long shot, but maybe this will be easier if he acts like he is.

“If you’re going to pretend to sleep,” Temari seethes, _thumping_ his flank with one of her pillows, “at least put some effort into it.”

“So you didn’t go,” he says dully, eyes still closed as he listens to her undressing for bed.

“No, Shikamaru, I’m halfway to Kiri and this is just wishful thinking on your part.” Temari all but flings herself into bed and suctions herself to his back, clawing her blunt nails into his stomach for emphasis. “It’s like they try to piss me off,” she grumbles into his shoulder, a little softer.

Huffing, he extracts her claws from his gut and links their fingers together before she finds another place to put them.

“I’m glad you said no,” Shikamaru offers mildly, when he’s sure she’s burnt herself out, for now. “What if I got lost on the street somewhere while you were gone? No way I could ask Kankuro for help. I’d just die of exposure.”

“It’d be the more honorable way to go,” she agrees, squeezing his hand. It’s quiet for so long he thinks that’s maybe the end of it, but really he should know better. “So what did they want to get you alone for?”

“You know, you are a real pain in my ass. I wish you were dumber.”

“You don’t.”

Shikamaru swallows. All afternoon, he’d been re-arranging their board, yet to find a strategy he’s willing to settle on. He hears the _click-click-click_ still until Temari bites, hard, at the junction of his neck and shoulder.

“Don’t ignore me.”

“They know.”

Her forehead is heavy between his shoulders, her sigh sitting heavy in his gut. Oh, no. _Ah,_ _shit_. Shikamaru feels a little sweat bead up at his temple. If they bypass her temper and move directly to her hurt, that’s a puzzle he’s not had nearly enough sleep to work through.

“I think they wanted you to tell them before now, yourself.” True, but offering it now is a shot in the dark, which Shikamaru hates doing more than anything.

It’s quiet. Temari’s thumb sweeps over his, the rhythm slowing as the silence stretches between them. She finally hums, low in her throat and unbearably soft. It sounds like an agreement, and his chest gives a little creak under the weight of it, an old floorboard under a wayward foot.

“If I never brought it...if I never mentioned getting married. And — if there wasn’t the mission. The embassy. Would you have still come? With me?”

Having thought about this very thing for most of the day, his answer is quick and easy: “Yes.”

Her arms tighten around him, and he lets the tide of her breathing against his back guide him nearly to dozing.

“I’ll talk to them.”

“Good.”

Her knee wiggles between his own, and she kisses the back of his neck. Shikamaru wants, very desperately, to go to sleep now, feeling that this whole affair was entirely too easy. Even the stilted, uncomfortably sincere conversation with her brothers earlier was quicker and more bearable than he expected, and by now Shikamaru is familiar enough with the spring of a trap to be wary.

But Temari doesn’t speak again for several long minutes, and Shikamaru can only wonder if his luck has finally turned around for the better. He brings their joined hands up to kiss her knuckles before settling in.

“Shikamaru.”

_Ah, shit._

“Hn?”

“I hope you don’t think I’ve forgotten where we left off earlier.”

He hopes, fervently, that they are allowed to sleep in tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> merry chrysler & thanks for reading :)


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